In a Place Like This
by Phoebe Dynamite
Summary: Sparks fly and unexpected fires start when an undercover cop and a researching novelist spy each other from across the room. AU. One-shot. Please don't be put off by the rating; it's tasteful... enough.


**A/N: Hello all you wonderful people. This one marks a few firsts for me. This is my first foray into AU, for example. The timeline of this is three years before _Flowers for Your Grave_, but minus the plot line of Beckett having been to a Castle book signing (I know we all love that little tidbit, but I had to sacrifice it for the logic of this one). Also, this is my first time writing M stuff, so it might actually be downright awful, and not in the awesome way.**

**I also apologize in advance if the crime part of this - aka, the "plot" strung throughout the smut - isn't wonderful. I wasn't terribly concerned about it when I dreamed this all up.**

**I don't**** own these marvelous creatures; our One and Done AWM rightfully does.**

**One final note - I have to dedicate this one to Heather, aka shimmeryshine, aka satankatic. She writes the best smut out there. Her stuff is so good that it makes me want to rip out all the pages of every copy of _50 Shades of Grey_ and replace them with her work. Thanks for getting us all hot and bothered, Heather! This tawdry little offering is in honor of you.**

* * *

_What's somebody like you doing in a place like this?_

* * *

Beckett ponders, so briefly, how she's become a magnet for strangers.

Perhaps the catalyst of her current condition began innocently enough – at college, where everyone is a stranger. She let a whole flood of them into her life, and somehow, cosmically, like a Hitchcock movie interspersed with a Greek tragedy, a bad one snuck in there. She had been so preoccupied by the others – the friends, the roommates, the hook-ups, the professors – that she really couldn't have been more blindsided when one across the country changed everything, took the open, bright freedom of her life and shackled it to an uptown alleyway.

It was never a gang member. No matter what they told her, no matter how many images she conjured up in her mind of a disaffected youth taking out his aggression on an innocent, middle-aged white lady walking alone at dusk, it never quite fit in the chasm left in her head. This stranger, he was more shadow than anything else. He wasn't possible, this thing that was heartless enough to kill her mother, this changeling that took on the shape of everyone who made eye contact with her on the street or whose face flashed across a television screen during the telling of some other horrific crime on the news. He didn't even have a voice… yet he whispered to her, close enough to her ear to send gooseflesh across her too-exposed neck. He taunted, a childish cartoon villain, a devil tempting her while she was self-exiled in the wilderness, but whenever she lost her nerve and finally spun around to confront him, he was gone, leaving her with no souvenir but the fear of her own insanity and the weight of her helplessness as she fought blindly against it.

And that one stranger had opened up the Trojan horse and let the rest of them out. Every day on the job, there they were, whether she wanted them there or not (she didn't, of course, but a twisted part of her, deep in the black, unseen recesses of her secrets, kind of _did_, just so she could lock them up forever). It was like a sick parade that traveled through an otherwise unremarkable office building. There they were, with their blank stares and sociopathic silences, with their glinting eyes and smirks they dangled out like bait in front of her face. Dealing with them made for good practice, they unknowingly feeding a sleeping monster every time they challenged her in an interrogation room. Behind her glass-like, statue eyes, behind her set jaw, underneath the finely controlled timbre of her voice, there was the rage of unanswered questions and justice forsaken.

She didn't consider the 12th Precinct of the New York City Police Department a fitting setting for literary brilliance, but it didn't take too long for her to think of her endless days there as trips through Hell as described by Dante. Everywhere she looked she found the worst of the worst: murderers to her left, thieves and betrayers to her right, the greedy and lustful and prideful swarming her on all sides. And somewhere, out of reach, the woman who was glorified in her eyes, untouchable, the beacon of all good and light to the sad, exhausted sojourner….

Her mother had never felt so close and yet so impossibly far away.

Yes, strangers polluted Beckett's life even more so than they did the lives of most upstanding citizens of New York. By now she was used to the scarring ridge of loneliness that it had inevitably created. It was raw, yet unremarkable, but she was making it through her days, and that was just fine. Strangers served their purpose well enough, whether it be to hand her off a drink without judgment or call her to alert her that her father had been found unconscious or fill her with a fleeting, fast-paced sense of pleasure without needing to ever see her again… it all made up for that chasm in her head that nothing she came across ever perfectly fit inside of, despite her dedicated, feverish searching.

The stranger currently pinning her arms back against the exposed brick of the wall while the tips of his teeth tease her neck is a new rush to file in line behind all the others she has acquired to manage her life. His body, all solid and warm and sweet smelling in the vee of her legs – _so strong_ he had grounded out as he hooked tightly onto them and forced them apart – is unfamiliar, like everything else of this night and this part of the city and her life. But it hardly matters. Mere hours from a dawn that will wipe everything clean to make room for more pain, regret, and exhaustion, she gasps as he takes a vampiric bite at her erratic jugular, soothing it with a too light, too tormenting caress of his tongue, and then she isn't thinking about anything anymore.

* * *

_Earlier that day…_

* * *

He had actually left his apartment to prepare for this adventure. After testing all of his colognes, he came to the decision that none of them smelled quite seedy and dangerous enough for his plans that night. So Richard Castle had sidled right up to the leggy, exotic-looking woman at the counter at Bloomingdale's and asked, under the ambient haze of her eye fuck, which scent she thought befit a… _man who is looking for trouble_. She had grinned devilishly at the tone he employed, and while he would call it his bedroom voice, he knew in all honesty it was his writer voice. Many women whom he found… _appealing_ had heard it in that particular room, but even those sorts of activities called for narrative. It was all a story, and an everyday voice just didn't make the cut for a good, worthy telling.

Neither did his cologne. He thought maybe the cheap stuff would be more authentic, but it was more fun to gaze at the women in the department store and indulge in a childish awe of the shiny, well-lit cases of expensive curios. It made him feel like he was in a movie montage, with his money to spend, and he had walked back out through the revolving doors into the flow of heavy foot traffic on Lexington Avenue with a new bottle of cologne and without the saleswoman's phone number. It was okay, though. On days he was either writing or researching, he tended to exhibit unexpected self-control in terms of his vices. Several pairs of attractive eyes had lingered on him, but he was already setting the scene in his mind, getting ready for one of his favorite parts of his almost entirely loveable job – undercover research.

He arrived home to the sound of stumbled-over electronic keyboard keys coming from upstairs. He smiled to himself as he set his bag and keys down and followed the well-intentioned mistakes and frustrated mutterings that filled the loft to his daughter's room. He was warmed to behold her bright red hair pulled back in a fishtail braid and his mother, sitting on the bed, her mouth parted as she listened on patiently while her granddaughter trudged through "Fur Elise." For all her flaws, Castle was glad he could rely on his mother to pitch in when it was needed, like in the realm of hairstyling. She also loved Alexis just as much as he did, which eased his guilt about leaving her tonight to partake in a less than glamorous undertaking.

Alexis started from the beginning of the song, the toyish, staccato sound of the keys puntucated by her nails hitting the plastic. She made it through the whole thing, Castle and Martha watching anxiously with raised brows, unconsciously leaning in towards her as she got the last notes out slowly but successfully. They both relaxed and clapped as Alexis turned to look at her father, beaming.

"I've been practicing really hard, Dad," his freckled twelve-year-old reported.

"She has," Martha testified, her husky voice full of grandmotherly pride. "Showing signs of her Rodgers musical inclinations already."

Alexis threw a smile at her grandmother over her shoulder, and even though his mother could be _grating_ sometimes (precisely why he had vowed long ago to never let her move in unless she was homeless or infirmed), he loved that she expanded the sense of family with which he provided his child. He had never grown up in an ordinary household, so sometimes it was hard to tell whether or not he was doing everything right. But all he had to do was look into the precocious eyes of his kid to realize that she was kind of perfect, more in spite of him than because of him.

"So we still have our deal, right?" Alexis piped up, pleading beginning to thread through her eyes. "If I get good on the piano I'm allowed to learn violin?"

He nodded his assent, knowing he was not very good at denying her anything, but also believing it was a fair deal. His heart melted a little as she stood and wrapped her arms around him gratefully. He rested his chin on the top of her head, his hand running against the long braid that fell across her back.

"Remember, though," he said, "'get good' is grammatically fine, but don't you dare venture into 'do good.' That is unacceptable in my house. The consequence of such an unspeakable act will be you up here playing your nose all night."

"Eww." She pulled away from him.

Martha stood up with a flourish, as always. "Honestly, Richard."

"And I'll make you listen to every practice session," he aimed at his mother.

Martha simply rolled her eyes and brushed past him into the hall, muttering something about grammar Nazis as she swept down the staircase. His arm wrapped around his daughter's shoulder, he and Alexis smiled knowingly at each other as they followed.

"I appreciate it, Dad," she told him quietly. "It'll all pay off when I'm taking my SATs and trying to get into a good college."

"You don't need to worry about that quite yet, pumpkin," he replied, ignoring the unexpected barb that popped up in his chest at the thought of his little girl all grown up. "But I'm glad to see you filing it away for future use. Me? I just use it to write cheap thrillers."

"Speaking of which," Martha interjected, turning around to face her progeny, "what time are you scurrying off for pretend time?"

He checked his watch and estimated. "Oh, probably seven hours." He released his daughter but nudged her. "Long after you have gone to bed."

"Daaaad," she drawled out, looking up at him through thick lashes with her classic knowing stare. "It will only be ten."

"And you are only twelve," he leveled back.

"But it's summer! It's not like I have – "

He raised his hand and shook his head. "I don't wanna hear it. I'm laying down Castle law, here. I'm regimenting bedtime better so that when you do run off to college one day, many, _many_ moons from now, you will have at least been on a decent sleep schedule at one point in your life."

Alexis rolled her eyes and walked away, clearly uncaring as to where her exhausting father had steered the conversation. As he watched her amble over to the living room, he felt needlessly guilty again about spending a night doing on-site research when he could be hanging out with his favorite girl in the world. But really, it was just one night, and he really wanted to nail this scene in _Storm's Break_. It was pivotal to the plot and a good, semi-original idea for a mid-book, intense, dialogue- and action-heavy scene. He needed all his creative juices flowing and all his senses right in the thick of it, receptive to any and all details so that he could convincingly present the world he was writing to his readers. Some young fan out there might one day have the book clutched to her chest with her lip skin broken between her teeth as she reads in the dark, hours after she should have gone to sleep, escaping into his words, the personification of why he does the job he does. He couldn't disappoint her.

* * *

A mug shot appeared on the computer screen as if by the sheer force of her wishing it so. A name and a slew of oft-used fake ones, too, as well as an impressive summary of a rap sheet. _Got you, you son of a bitch_, she thought.

It had yet to get old, the addictive hit of nabbing a lead. It still made her skin hot and her fingers itchy for her gun. A thrill she tempered with her hard-earned control over the situation at hand. She was dispensing orders to her fellow detectives, all the while feeling it all the way down to her feet, the blazing white adrenaline rush of being that much closer to solving a violent crime and knowing she was the one orchestrating the whole thing.

"Beckett," the Captain called from halfway out of his office. She went right to him, her body already anticipating and moving quickly, an arrogant smirk that should be reserved for the dirtbag himself fighting for space on her face. She weighed down her voice appropriately to speak to her superior.

"Yes, sir?"

"Beckett, we need you to get the drop on this guy. We've been trying to smoke him out for a long time. He's got a lot of protection from all different kinds of folks, none of whom I particularly like."

She could feel her eyes twinkling, her mouth strained from checking her emotions and remaining professional. But the Captain had known her for a long time now, and she suspected he understood her thrill in a way that bonded them quietly, under the surface of their captain/detective relationship. Roy Montgomery was a great cop.

"What I need you to do is target him and then go in for the kill." He eyed her heavily as he leaned across his desk. "No hesitation, no playing it safe. You find out where he is, you find a way to slap the cuffs on him, you got that?"

"Yes, sir." The mirth trickled through her voice.

He relaxed a bit, appeared if he was going to commend her for her obedience or even her willingness, but instead he lowered his voice and conveyed his seriousness through his dark eyes. "I need you to be careful, though, you and your team. This will be a big one for you if you can pull it off. People will take notice. And I have faith in you, Detective."

Her heart softened amidst the fire barreling through her body, unable to help the surge of affection for her boss. She smiled at him, ducked her head quickly.

"Thank you, sir."

"You wanna thank me? Bring me this scumbag. I wanna see him sweat it out in one of my interrogation rooms."

Beckett didn't bother to try to hide her jubilant grin then. "Yes, sir."

* * *

Castle asked his driver to pull up a few blocks from the spot, not wanting to draw too much unnecessary attention tonight. Though arriving in a sleek car was certainly not atypical for the crowd at this place, he wanted to fade more than anything, a fly on the wall, not an active participant. He loved to have his fun, but the fun at this place might be a little too much for even him. So fading was good. It would allow him the chance to observe. Dressed in a dark suit, smelling of musk and aftershave, he strolled unassumingly through the unlit streets, a shadow among shadows. He couldn't help the trill of excitement leaping from nerve to nerve.

The air smelled a bit rancid, and other than the growing sound of music as he came closer and closer to his destination, the night was given a heavy soundtrack of construction noises, honking boat horns, and speeding trains. He was right on the Bronx River, practically underneath of the commuter rail that connected Manhattan with its neighboring borough. The towering projects of Harlem across the water seemed to stare at him judgmentally, but he just uncoiled the tension in his shoulders and monitored his pace so that he wouldn't look suspicious in his approach. This was a public club, so he really didn't have too much to worry about, but this was a notoriously dangerous neighborhood, the most southern edge of the South Bronx, and the atmosphere created in him a potent mix of anxiousness and stimulation, all of it resulting in a rushing pulse of adrenaline belying his cool, (hopefully) suave exterior.

The uneven street was choked mostly by dirty warehouses, but there was absolutely no disguising the club. He couldn't decide whether to laugh or roll his eyes at the tacky, stain-ridded red carpet laid lazily over the sidewalk, lined by velvet ropes. The front door was uncared for, ordinary, but bolstered by a massive black man in a suit, standing impassively before the line of men waiting to get inside. Framing him (and increasing the utter ridiculousness of the whole thing) were Doric columns that held up a pediment that displayed the name of the club: Caesar's.

Ugh, it couldn't be cheesier and more clichéd if it tried. But that was what made it perfect.

He joined up with the line of guys that moved pretty swiftly inside the door. The music was pounding from within, vibrating through the old walls of the establishment, thanks to the – of course – heavy usage of bass. The windows were covered in a cheaper version of frosted glass and spray painted with silhouettes of busty (and presumably naked) women. His head filled with images he filed back to retrieve when he was back in his office, surrounding by items that were exemplary of his good taste, where he couldn't smell a nearby body of water that his imagination told him was full of half-rotted corpses.

When he was at the door, the bouncer lazily looked down at him and then gave him a rough pat-down that almost sent him stumbling backwards. But a moment later he was given the O.K. to enter and he walked across the threshold, beholding nothing too extraordinary but certainly worthy of note for his book. He committed to memory the exact smell that burrowed instantly into his nostrils, that of sweat and alcohol marinating on the sticky floor under the harsh lights. There were several medium-sized stages occupied by naked women, none of whom were quite his type enough to catch his attention for more than the biologically-required moment. He was here on business, not for pleasure (and even if he was, this was _not _where he would be spending his time and money) so he quickly turned his attention to the crowd. A bit diverse, to his mild surprise. Largely black and Hispanic men of various ages and states of dress, the rest of the male crowd pockmarked by what looked to be Albanians in tight pants and collared dress shirts, with hairy, thick brow ridges. Okay, in terms of all that, he looked a bit out of place, but he skimmed the outskirts of the crowd through a haze of cigar smoke and bawdy laughter. He found a seat – not that he cared much to sit down anywhere in the general vicinity – near to some older, fat, white-haired gentlemen who, though appearing to have a good time, seemed less interested in the women and more so in each other and the money they were passing around, classic guys who were there for the business aspect of it all, whatever that entailed.

After sitting down, he was promptly approached by a woman wearing _something_ that _no one_ would consider proper work attire (or attire at all) and asked for his drink order. Instead of letting his go-to order slip out of his mouth, he took a quick scan of the room in an attempt to match himself even further to the atmosphere. He turned to the waitress with a smile and told her, "Hennessy Black, on the rocks."

She turned to go and purposefully brushed her breasts against him, off to get him a drink that was admittedly a bit cliché on his part, but he definitely didn't hate the stuff, and he was gonna need it if he was planning on staying here for a while.

The thumping music, something fast and sort of a cracked out mix of Latin and techno, died down to give way to a slow, smooth song while the women on stage collected their money and headed off for a quick break or something of the like. All around him drinks were replenished and runs were made to the ATM in the corner. Castle drew a breath, relaxed a smile onto his face, and had to laugh internally at what he could write off of his taxes for his goofy, wonderful professional.

The next part… oh, the next part was a strange rush. The drink was in his hand suddenly, he was tipping the naturally overindulgent waitress, and the singer was coming in like a pure shot of mood-setter over the speakers. Later, when he would look back on it, he would be upset that the music had set up him almost for a joke or a bad scene from a teen movie, but at the time it didn't matter much. The song was pulsing around him, the lyrics so cheesy but so nicely sung – _I don't know your name but excuse me, Miss, I saw you from across the room_ – when he looked up towards stage right and saw her in a doorway.

Later, he'd tell himself that his first thought was _Where have you been all my life? _But in reality, it had been a plain and simple_ Fuck_.

* * *

She didn't wear too many tight dresses these days, but the bright red number from freshman year was nice and snug on her thanks to her pretty strict regiment of working constantly and barely eating. Of course she was wearing a trench coat over it, one that was tasteful but still a little sexy, her dress peeking through the material she left unbuttoned and untied. The boys had whooped, laughed, and made their dumb boys jokes when she'd shown up in her little undercover number, but she'd just rolled her eyes and gotten on with her life. It could have been a lot worse; she had been working with Ryan and Esposito for a few years now and knew they were just messing around, unlike some of the other misogynistic jackasses she had had to put up with since enrolling in the Academy. But tonight, at least for now, she only had to deal with whoever would dare to paw all over here in this skeezy, terrible club.

Marv Loudon would spend his time here. It reeked of illegal goings-on. The second she walked in she had actually caught a whiff of burnt cocaine and spotted right away a few encounters between patrons that seemed a little off considering the social context. But Beckett wasn't a dope cop, not caring for the overwhelming scent of weed as she maneuvered unseen into a back area from which she was hoping to get a good look over the place. She also figured if there were women here, the back would be the place that most of them would be gathered (not that she would actually… fit in with them). From a little nook of a doorway, she made her perch, making using of the terrible lighting to scan the faces laid out before her, all of them hungrily watching the girls on stage. She couldn't help making a little _hmmpf_ noise of disapproval; one of these shitheads had to have a daughter at home.

She could hardly tell one man from another at her angle, so she moved a little to get a better view, though it made her slightly more visible. She wasn't a smoker, but she had brought a pack that had been buried in her sock drawer for months, one of her crutches-of-the-month back around Christmastime. Pulling a long Virginia Slim out of the pack, she lit it and took her first drag quickly and efficiently, the mini-high it gave her just a small bonus to the overall need to blend in a little better. The smoke hid her face and made her, hopefully, more a part of this crowd. She craned her neck, took another long drag, and almost stomped her foot in momentary frustration before she finally saw, way across the room, near to a convenient back exit, the profile of the man behind the murder of a young mother from City Island whose body had been found mangled in a dumpster in her district.

_You son of a bitch_.

She thought of what Montgomery had told her, that he wanted her to nail him and prove herself. But it wasn't about that. That smug asshole had gotten away way with too much for her liking, and he was about to literally get away with murder. Too many people in this damn city got away. She felt the fever-like ache spread in her from muscle to muscle, telling her to make her move, slap the cuffs on him, but he was surrounded by at least fifteen men, all at least twice her size, and she could call in her team, but there was a dominant part of her that wanted – that _needed_ – to draw it out slowly, like a burn, like poison. She wanted to try this on her own first.

She looked for a good avenue to get near him. Watching carefully but not so intently that she might draw attention to herself, she took in the way strippers and waitresses vied for his attention. He seemed to be in the middle of a serious talk with a man invisible to her, both of them oblivious to the horribly loud music and mostly naked women making eyes at them. She cursed to herself, admitting that this might not be as easy as she thought.

And then she noticed something. A man sitting alone near Loudon's entourage, like a stray little island situated near an archipelago. There were other men here alone of course, but this one was different. He wasn't looking for or at women. If she actually didn't know any better, she would say that he was just kind of just enjoying the ride, looking around, making notes with his eyes. It was difficult to tell through the smoke, but she thought that they were blue.

Unthinking, solely on instinct, Beckett cut through the cramped backstage quarters, maneuvering uncaringly around hordes of nude women as they shouted to one another, changed costumes, shuffled expertly through bills, passed blunts around. After quickly disposing of her cigarette in a random ashtray, she emerged on the other side near her target, watching with hawk eyes the whole scene from much closer. Yeah, even the hottest girl on the planet would have a hard time getting past this man's security. Her brain about nine steps ahead of her, she dropped the coat to the ground, her eyes going to the bar but her peripherals tacked to Loudon.

Her instincts kicked up like dust in a tornado. Someone was watching her. Being careful, she looked over the men gathered around Loudon but saw no one leering, nothing she expected. Then she felt a liquid-y fire break through her sternum and flood her whole upper body as she turned her head slightly, the flourish sending her hair across her cheek and neck, and looked into a striking pair of blue eyes. Involuntarily, her breath rushed out of her in a little gust. Whoever he was, he didn't fit in here; the suit and the refined look about him gave away as much, but it was more than that it. It was the way he was looking at her.

Lust? Maybe. But it did not take hold of his face in the usual way, didn't reflect the drainage of blood from his brain and leave him with darkened, mindless eyes. No, he was looking at her like he was shocked that she was standing there at all. A few scenarios swept through her mind in quick succession: did she know him from somewhere? No, she'd remember someone that handsome. Did she really look that out of place? Could be, but really, she'd looked better in her day, her hastily thrown together undercover outfit not too jaw-dropping (especially in the presence of completely nude ladies with much more outstanding… assets than she possessed). Was he on to her? Could he see right through her, see her service piece strapped to the inside of her thigh?

The thought of that, combined with the heady, stunned look on his face, sent a noticeable shiver through her. It didn't help, she quickly realized, that she had yet to take her eyes off of him, too.

"'Scuse me," a girl said as she pushed past Beckett, heading for some lucky patron waving bills in the air. Stuttering, broken from the strange little spell, she shuffled back, more into the doorway, trying not to look at the man but knowing – _feeling_ – his eyes still on her. She tucked her hair behind her ear (_dammit_, that was her self-conscious tick) and took a moment to gather herself. _Focus, Beckett_. A loathed criminal was twenty feet away and she could _not_ get distracted by a handsome stranger in an expensive suit gazing at her through a haze of smoke and flashing, multicolored lights. In a _strip club_, for god's sake.

The music changed, the bass going off like denotations around her. Ugh, especially if the current soundtrack was "Pour Some Sugar On Me."

"Beckett," Ryan's voice sounded in her flesh-colored earpiece, hidden behind her curtain of hair. "Do you got a visual?"

She leaned against the doorframe, pretending to stretch out in her tiny, clingy dress as she raised her arm above her head and turned away momentarily. "Yeah, I got him," she murmured, trying her best to hide the fact that she was talking to herself.

"How's it looking, boss?"

She shot a look over at the group of greased up men, clinking drinks and eyeing strippers. Then her gaze slipped, moved helplessly to the left of all of them, connected with two blue eyes in a way that hit her right in the chest.

"I'll let you know how things progress."

* * *

They moved for each other at the same moment, and it didn't escape Castle's attention. Well, he couldn't be sure if she was moving _for_ him, but she was sauntering in his direction without drawing her eyes from his. In a second his brain was thrown into overdrive, everything else of the club and the night erased so that his head was filled with her. In the eight seconds that she took to cross the room, his senses, acting like overzealous scribes, had recorded a list of things was he going to take apart one day to either use for a character or for his own personal enjoyment (or both, what the hell). She had the longest legs; the throbbing, erratic lights highlighted the sinewy curves of her calf muscles as she moved. And that _dress_. Compared to the scraps of fabric in the general vicinity, it was actually sort of modest, but it certainly hugged everything in just the right way. His wandering, transfixed eyes drank greedily, absorbed thoroughly: translucent skin; a sultry mouth pulled slightly in by the teasing hint of teeth; hair loosely curled, falling past her sharply-angled shoulders in light-absorbing waves; a bright swath of neck that called out from below a pronounced jaw. All he could think of was where he wanted his mouth, how she might taste, wonder what kind of noise would rise out of that succulent throat if he applied pressure in just the right place….

But what it all came down to, really, were her eyes. He couldn't discern the color from a distance, but by the time he was able, she was moving right past him, smirking down at his gaping mouth that was starting to shift into a mirroring expression, her trench coat – a fucking _trench coat_ – thrown over her shoulder. The long, lilac lines of her veins shimmered across the occupied arm, like a map of a world he was suddenly ravenous to explore. His tongue drying rapidly in his mouth, he accepted the strange slowing down of time as she barely skimmed him, holding his stare.

_Hazel eyes_.

His impulses leapt with abrupt verve, the result of which was his fingers reaching out and grabbing the wrist of the arm dangling like a shiny toy near to him. Her pulse danced under his fingertips, an exact copy of the singular straining overcoming his neck. He swallowed, eyes widening. It was like a chemical reaction, touching her. Heady. Instant. Overwhelming.

She perhaps appeared just as affected as he for a millisecond, but then the shifting darkness of the club swallowed her back up, gave her cover, and she was able to assert her total control over the situation through the soft crinkles that rippled around her eyes and her tongue poking through her teeth.

Oh, _shit_.

"Mind if I have that back?" she asked him, tugging lightly on her arm. "I kind of need it."

Ooh, her voice. _Molten_ was the first word his brain supplied upon hearing it. Liquefied by heat; in a state of fusion. He felt like he could just dive into that voice and swim through all its different layers before emerging completely satisfied. The sound of it spurred his response from his lips, his body reacting on its own to hers.

"So do I," he murmured.

She made a face at him that expressed annoyance laced with a pretty high concentration of amusement, as if to say, _Really? That the best you got?_ She made a move to pull away, which she could have done quite easily, but her skin was singing to him beneath his fingertips. His touch was light; going solely on feeling, he used the pad of his thumb to apply the slightest bit more pressure to the softness of her wrist. He couldn't help but smile to feel the shiver move through her.

"And what would you use it for?" she asked him. He had to hand it to her; she was maintaining her cool, even if that question, leveled expertly, playing right along with him, was uttered a tiny bit breathily.

"I have a couple ideas." He looked up the length of her arm, trying to manage easy breathing around the heat coursing through his whole body. A subtle scent was coming off her flesh, some mix of perfume and the body's natural smell. He took one whiff, drew his head back a bit surprised, intoxicated.

He wasn't prepared for her to lithely pull her arm out of his grasp. He blinked at the empty air for a moment before he looked up and saw some look cross her face that he couldn't quite define, not with his mind half-hazed, not when it was one he had never really seen before. Her lips were pressed together in a tight line, her head subtly cocked, and for a few moments he feared he had truly displeased her, but then her eyebrow jumped up smoothly and a twinkle cascaded through her eyes. His overworked throat muscles tightened immediately.

"If you'll excuse me," she said, her voice all velvet as she started to walk away.

He wasn't at the point of panic quite yet. She didn't look disinterested, so he decided to read it as an invitation, a challenge. Even though it felt like his blood was thrumming – where on earth had she _come from_? – he betrayed nothing but confidence and coolness. He looked up to watch her go and said, rather noncommittally, "Can I get you a drink?"

She stopped, smiled softy. He wasn't pressing her, which was welcome, and weirdly sweet in the context of a strip club, but she couldn't extract the purpose from her step, the target from her sight. She fingered the cool glass in his hand, brought it up to her mouth, swirled the drink beneath her nose, and downed it quickly. He watched with parted lips and wide eyes as her throat ebbed and flowed with imbibing, watched as she ran the pink tip of her tongue along the rim to soak up any remaining taste. He'd never know it, but an abrupt rupture of pain broke through the combined warmth of alcohol and sexual chemistry; she'd grown so fond of cognac after her mother died, only because it was mysteriously the one drink her father, during his demon-battling, had never touched. She couldn't hate the stuff, couldn't blame it for anything, and so she had learned every burst of flavor against her tongue quite well in the last seven years.

She placed the cup in his palm, fought against the smile that wanted to bloom because of the suns spinning in his eyes when he looked at her. "I don't prefer Black to original," she told him, "but I'm just glad you have it in you to handle the stuff at all."

She walked away, enjoying the effect she had on him for a moment – just a moment – before she returned her full attention to the case. That was what she told herself, even though all of her receptive, humming nerves told her frantically that he was the persistent type, that even though she had momentarily paralyzed him, he would come after her.

Even knowing all of this, she was still shocked by the feel a large hand at her hip, fingers splayed across her bone, grazing the tight skin of her abdomen through the thin material of her dress. Her intake of breath was sharp, audible, a match for the warm stream of breath coursing through her hair and infiltrating her ear. Warmness pooled instantly in her belly, telling her that even if she wanted to be offended or put off by his forwardness, she really couldn't.

_Fuck_, Beckett. So _not_ the time to get aroused.

"I think that if you gave me the chance," he murmured huskily into her ear, "you'd find that there are a lot of things I can handle quite well."

She turned her head to find their faces an inch apart, dark eyes calling out to blue eyes on pure instinct, and she whispered, "You know you can't pay me, right?"

His smirk tightened in the corners, simultaneously wicked and boyish. "I think that's the best part."

Instant chemistry. She gnawed on her bottom lip, her gaze roving his face helplessly. He knew it; she knew it. They both could have been interested in anyone else here. He could have been waving bills at a woman who had to take them and do near whatever he wanted to him. But he wanted _her_. And she had settled for less charming and less attractive men when needing a stranger's comforts in the past. If only… if only there wasn't a murderer nearby and a van of armed, ready detectives parked at the warehouse next door.

The timing was a bit wrong.

But she could still have some fun. After all, she _was_ undercover.

"I'm Nikki," she exhaled against his lips, stare traveling south to his mouth and then up again to those magnetic eyes.

"Jameson," he replied.

* * *

If she hadn't been on a case, she might have wasted no time with words, just dragged him off somewhere and smothered any other needless flirtations with her willing mouth. But, as it turned out, not giving in so easily definitely came with perks. Like how this guy was a bit of a conversational wizard. He could turn quite a phrase, kept up with everything and anything she said, and was a pretty stunning combination of seductive and real. She used up half of her brain examining the Loudon situation and the other half trying to figure out this mysterious man.

Her body, however, was having no trouble at all. There was nothing to figure out; he looked at her, and she felt like she was on fire.

They sat at the bar together, but they faced the crowd, both not seeming to want to be closed off. She noted as they sipped their respective cognacs the way his eyes seemed to absorb every slight movement that happened before them. For a brief moment, she thought, _cop_, but he seemed to be enjoying himself a little too much to be like her, here on a mission on which a homicide case depended. He also was a little too put together, more James Bond than Dirty Harry.

"So, who here has devious motives?" she asked him, eyeing him over the rim of her glass as she twirled the tiny drink stirrer around.

"You mean besides you?" he volleyed back without hesitation, his mouth serious but a gleam in his eye. She fought a laugh off of her lips as he scanned the room, his lips pursed in his perusal. She imagined that he produced a kind of adorable _hmmpf_ noise, but it was hard to tell over the music. He took a drink, the movement of his throat accenting a slight patch of stubble on his Adam's apple. Ooh, it would be good to run her tongue right down –

"Him," he said, nodding subtly towards the far corner of the club, bringing her out of her minor state of distraction. He looked back at her over the shoulder he was leaning against the bar behind him.

She looked at his target and noticed right away that it was one of Loudon's cronies, separated from the pack. He was whispering in a Hispanic woman's ear, her face impassive as he trailed two ringed fingers down her exposed stomach. Kate forced her attention, narrowed it down and ran through information in her head. Unthinkingly, she shifted her position and brought one leg over the other, exposing a swath of thigh. Of course, she didn't notice she had done this until she felt the already distinct heat of his gaze on her.

She was surprised to feel her own throat dry up at seeing him staring at her over the glass tipped into his mouth. He was drinking with vigor, and she couldn't help the blush that crept up her cheeks. To calm herself down, she cleared her throat and asked, "Why him?"

It took a moment for his attention to shift back to what they had been talking about, but when he did, she was uprooted slightly by his intensity. He stared at the man for a bit more then leaned in towards her. His scent was instantly overcoming, but she noticed (through slightly dilated eyes) that he was not using the proximity to flirt.

"Okay," he said, poising his hands in a relaxed sort of storyteller position. "He's a rough and tumble young guy, grew up with a few people in the neighborhood who were looking out for him, telling him that he could do better, get out, make something of himself. But the older guys he knew that he looked up to, they put pressure on him, convinced him to help them out in one or two sticky situations. Sometimes they needed a driver, sometimes someone to pull the gun on the store clerk in a petty robbery. But of course it snowballed, no matter how the guilt gnawed at him when he would come home to his grandmother and kiss her cheek and make up a lie about how he got her that money for a bottle of Admiral Nelson she loves. But he couldn't stop. Not after he was introduced to the money, the drugs, the women. Not when, for the first time in his life, he felt needed, important. And now, now there's no way out. Now he's done too much wrong, been on the wrong side of an interrogation table too many times. Now there's a man whom he owes too much, and his life isn't quite his any longer. But he still tells himself from time to time, when he needs to, that it's all okay because he is finally getting the respect he deserves and is living the life that he always dreamt of."

The combination of his voice and his ease with the words as they tumbled out of his mouth left her with a feeling of freefall, and when he was finished, she felt as if she had suddenly hit water. She blinked, shook her head, leaned back a little. Taking a long sip of her drink to give herself time to collect herself, she avoided his dreamy blue eyes as they called to her like a tranquil sea, bidding her to jump right in. She ignored the heat coming off of her skin, mingling with his, and trained her eyes to the man in the corner. The woman looked slightly more uncomfortable, and he a bit more serious, but it was really nothing to be too worried about. He could just be propositioning her. In any case, Beckett didn't need to out herself as NYPD unless things got a little too handsy for her (and the law's) taste.

"You like words, don't you?"

She turned to the man – Jameson – and cocked her brow. "How do you mean?"

"Words." He stretched out his arms against the edge of the bar, his hand falling just beside hers, their fingers not touching but in each other's orbit in a way that sent a hot, desperate jolt up her spine. "You like words. Can be seduced by them. But not just any words." He paused; she tried to think of a clever response, but before she could, he narrowed his eyes and smiled a little. _Sexy_. "I bet you're a reader."

And all she could think of, instantly, was how she had been rereading the entire catalogue of Richard Castle's work in the interim between new Derrick Storm books. They got under her skin, freed her mind from its preconceived notions, told her through clever metaphors and suspenseful chapter endings that maybe, in some universe, there was sense behind any of it, _motive._ A goddamned _reason_. Thinking of this, she put her drink down, leaned forward, and accepted that this was true about her, what he said. She was a very physical person, so when someone was adept with words (like she wasn't, especially in the last seven years) something primal in her reached out and tried to hang on. She wanted words. Explanations. Poetry. Something that glorified the wreckage she sifted through every goddamned day.

She looked him in the eye and parted her lips, but before she could do or say anything, she noticed something out of the corner of her eye. She turned towards the man and the woman near the door; he was taking an imperceptible glance at their surroundings, but not imperceptible enough for Beckett. She tracked his gaze across the room, caught it just in time to see it connect with someone else's over at their end of the bar.

Marv Loudon.

Jameson was quick enough to follow these fast flicks of her gaze, so when she looking back over at the man in the corner, he was, too. Their posture was enough to make it look like they were really into each other (and they were, of course) but their eyes were glued to the greasy young man and the stoney-faced stripper. They both saw something move in between the two, and it wasn't a stack of bills.

"Did he just slip her a burner phone?" they both said at the exact same time.

Like it was all part of that magnetic pull that had been dragging them together all night, the moment the words flew from both of their mouths, they looked at each other, faces close, eyes questioning, lips swelling with desire. Thoroughly distracted for a moment, they didn't turn back to the people in question until they saw the flash of the stripper's blue, sequined outfit as she moved across the club towards Loudon's crew. Beckett turned and watched, grabbed at her drink blindly, and threw the rest of it down her throat, the burn filling her with a matching sense of thrill to the adrenaline starting to pump through her. She went to stand when she felt a hand trap her arm to the bar.

"That was mine," the sexy stranger kind of grunted at her.

She turned around, confused, her head heady and swimming from so many different elements. She latched her eyes onto the aroused, shimmering pools of his before looking down to find that yes, indeed, she had accidentally drunk his drink. Too ahead of all of it to be in tremendous control, she took hers with her free hand and gracefully slid it his way.

"I'll make it up to you," she said, making use of his moment of disarm to pull free of him. She could feel his eyes follow her as she moved towards the restrooms, where she was going to put in a call to the guys and get this show on the road.

She had to give it to him. He left her alone for a whole seven minutes. It was enough time to tell Ryan and Espo what she had seen and plot out her next move. When she finally emerged from the restroom, he was standing in the hallway, nonchalantly stirring what she could ascertain from the lipstick on the rim was her drink, his eyes on the amber pool contained in his fingertips. She couldn't help the smile on her face as she approached him.

She fucking _loved_ that he didn't look up at her even when she was just a few breaths away from him, loved the constant shift between him being dumbstruck by her and completely surprising her with his coolness. He was such fun to play with. And sweet Moses did he smell good, smelled like getting caught in the back of a car with a hand up your shirt.

"You do realize that there are quite a few ladies here for whom you do not have to wait outside of bathrooms, right?"

His stare remained lost at the bottom of the drink. "Yes, but none of them, I think, will be able to use proper grammar as a means of making my pants tighter."

She wanted to laugh, could feel it bursting like sunlight through her chest, but she settled on an old classic, sinking her teeth into her bottom lip. Leaning back against the wall, she could both better evaluate this strange, enticing man and watch as the crony who had given the stripper the phone went out into the back alley through an unmarked exit. She should be making moves, but she couldn't resist a little more play if she could get it. God, her life was so quiet sometimes, so couldn't pass up an opportunity for some loud.

"I don't quite know if I'm what you're looking for," she said.

The man looked up at her finally, beaming at her a look that was all sureness, confidence, raw ability to get what he wanted. It weakened her usually stable knees.

"You tell me, Nikki. I'm looking for a pretty girl who thinks she can leap tall buildings in a single bound, carries the weight of the world on her shoulders, yet still manages to laugh at some of my jokes." Without breaking eye contact with her, he brought the glass to his lips, pressed his tongue momentarily against the colored smudges left by her mouth, and devoured the remaining liquid.

She almost lost in then, shockingly aroused by just that little gesture, and then of course by the words, the words that plucked her like she was an instrument capable of making great music if she was just under the right hands. Breathless, she forced her body to remain still. She had a job to do, an important job. So much counted on her. And yet…

She leaned forward, her mouth at his ear, his hair tickling her nose. "I don't fuck in strip club bathrooms."

He was undaunted. "It's a good thing I've got a bed elsewhere, then."

Her body was singing, pleading with her over-occupied mind to just say the words that allowed it the feel of magnificent sheets against her skin, a solid headboard to rock against, a man like _this_ inside of her. God, she just _wanted_. Her reaction to someone she barely knew had never been so intense, so instant, so apparently right.

But there was a slight crackle in her ear, caused by the piece she was wearing, and it brought it off her high long enough for her to send a perfunctory glance towards Loudon. Only –

_Fuck_.

He was gone.

* * *

It was all fast after that, as if the thick, honey-like trickle of time for the past hour had run its course and now everything was catching up. She cornered the stripper, demanded to know where Loudon had went, and, after learning that he had headed out through the exit behind the bar, called to the boys with his location as she sprinted out the back. Without calling for backup of her own. Which was fine. Kate Beckett had not really proven to be the partner type.

The phone-slipping crony was alone at the end of the unlit alley. He heard her heels as she ran towards him, but he wasn't quick enough. She knocked the gun out of his hand, twisted his wrist, and sent the heel of her hand up into his nose. He cursed in Spanish and stumbled backward with a yell, but there was a spinning fire in Beckett, still not completely reined in, still not totally tempered after the storm of her mother's murder, and it all demanded more. So she sent a completely unnecessary punch across the man's face; a moment later, he was unconscious at her feet.

The oceanic rush in her ears had blockaded the sound of footsteps behind her. But it had dulled enough in time for her to hear his breathless gasp, hear him murmur across her neck, "That was amazing."

She turned and beheld a man completely enamored. And it was enough. It was more than enough. She heard Esposito in her ear – _Yo, Beckett, we got him_ – but could only see this man in front of her, his chest heaving, his eyes begging. Her body pulsated with all that needed release and knew – knew, somehow, like all of it made sense in a way that eluded her understanding – that he would be the place that she could find something akin to what she had been looking for. True safety and unadulterated thrill all at once.

Was it a choice? She didn't know. She didn't care. She didn't dare tear her eyes from his as she pulled out her phone, called Ryan, and told them to take the lead with Loudon. She was done for the night. In one sense, anyway.

And then… and then it was limbs connecting, mouths agreeing, breaths being stolen without struggle or opposition.

It was all inevitable.

* * *

He knows how to touch her. Everything she likes, everything that drives her (now quite literally) up the wall, he knows like he's already read the manual, has practiced, has perfected the moves. And she feels weak and invincible all at one time, susceptible to all-consuming heat but made stronger, more viable and alive by it. It feels _amazing._

While he's brushing her dress aside and sliding his tongue across her nipple while his other hand works the other one, she tosses her gun and holster expertly aside. It would be undeniably hot for him to find it, but she wants to remain undercover. Wants this secret forever. One more dark, twisted alley to mark her life's chaos.

He trails down her body, his head bobbing against her panting torso, and then he's lifting up her dress by the hem. She's naked in a moment, the night air abrasive in a weird, pleasurable way as it hits her skin. She's in nothing but her heels and a black lace thong, and he's looking at her like he just wants to _worship_ her. She bites her lip at feeling moisture gather eagerly between her thighs.

She doesn't know why it's like this, but it's like he can read her mind, because his mouth is back at her neck and he's grunting in a remarkably _tender_ way, _I want to see you. Everything that I can_.

She moans helplessly in approval, she who is fortified so completely, who doesn't expose herself to anyone because it will fucking hurt when her trust is eventually shattered and she is left with nothing. His fingers press against the tiny scrap of fabric that qualifies as underwear and he half-groans, half-laughs at beholding how wet she is. He applies the exact right amount of pressure, enough to start her bare back sliding against the brick wall. The incredible sensation between her legs blasts away the pain of the friction, one trumping the other.

She wraps a leg around his waist and peels the suit jacket off his body. Meeting the straight row of taunting buttons holding together his dress shirt, she decides _fuck it_ and rips them apart, desperate for his chest, for the chance to touch his skin. And it's searing, just like she knew it would be. His pectorals are like thriving embers underneath of her palms, scorching her, branding her forever, his heaving breath penetrating her so that they'll always have this shared moment, no matter what.

His fingers still for a moment as he comes to terms with the brute force of his own arousal, but then they press harder and she groans loudly, throwing her head back. Her head is completely swamped, so it takes her a few seconds to register the feeling of his _teeth_ against her inner thigh. His fucking _teeth_. She hears herself swearing as if from outside of her own body as he moves torturously slowly up her leg, each bite he leaves doused by the wet, forgiving press of his tongue before he moves on. She fists his hair between her fingers and holds on for dear life as he clamps down lightly on her underwear right on the sensitive spot, the little dip the precedes the hipbone. The graze of his teeth almost makes her come right then.

He's smiling; she can feel it etched into her skin as he tugs the lace down her leg. Her thighs are quivering as she realizes that she is completely naked, willing, ready, dying, and he is about to give so selflessly. What a charitable stranger she has found.

_Fuck_ she cries as his tongue finds purchase inside of her, wet heat meeting wet heat as his hands pin her hips against the wall. She's straining, but she can't help it, and some lucid corner of her brain realizes with an internal smirk that he is _enjoying_ her control issues, that he is spurred on by her release as much as she is. _Relax_ he mouths against her, and like magic she floods him with the intensity of her desire. Her whole body is shaking as the lightning builds, perfect, _so perfect_, and it's the best thing she's ever felt in her entire life.

Her tongue is rendered useless by the skillfulness of his, so she can't tell him to slow down or it'll all be over too fast. But he knows. He goddamn _knows_ to make his strokes softer, lighter, lazier, circular as opposed to rough and vertical. She is whimpering, her hands now kneading his shoulders. She already knows that this orgasm, building like a tsunami through the sensitive muscles he is playing with, will leave her nerves so raw it will be painful afterward, but it will have been worth it. She closes her eyes and lets it take her, the sweetness of his mouth, the perfection of his hands on her flesh. He's on his knees between her legs in an alley behind a _strip club_ in the _Bronx_ and she feels the attention he gives words now lavished on her.

He hits the tangle of nerves at just the right angle, not too soon, after just enough satisfactory build up. She arches forward, swearing, pressing her flat stomach against his forehead. Spurred on, excited, he goes faster, hits it again and again, and then she's shuddering, the alley filling with her moans, the sensation washing out everything in her that is not perfect and bright with ecstasy and unwilling to give in completely to him.

He even retreats at the exact right moment, just before she has to pull him off. He kisses his way up her body, relishes her breathlessness. She is boneless, thoughtless, knowing only to grab for his face when it's finally in proximity. She kisses him her thanks and feels in every hollow inside of her that this intensity is hinting at a world of _more_, possibilities only alluded to in this encounter. It's too much for right then, so she just unbuttons his pants without prying her lips from his.

* * *

He bites her lip as he finally slides inside of her. He fills her, completely. They fit seamlessly, nothing of it an intrusion, no need for adapting, just wet warmth and collision and stars bursting behind his eyes.

He's doing this blindly, his whole world dark. She fills his arms, too, all pliant and soft and wild, and he can barely comprehend what he's doing, just knows that no one night stand he has ever had has felt like this. Like… magic. Like fate of the body.

She's making incoherent sounds in his ear, but then one comes out intelligibly, a piece of gold panned from rubble.

_Words_.

He opens his mouth automatically against her chest, but he miraculously realizes that she doesn't mean dirty talk. She means that he was right, she _does_ get off on words, and she wants them now, while he's inside of her, while they are momentarily not strangers but this one burning mass of rightness.

_You're perfect_ he offers against her skin, and he means it in that moment.

She groans through a deep, powerful stroke, but shakes her head. _Something real_ she ripples across the puckered skin of his shoulder.

He uses his entire body to shove her harder against the wall; they wail into each other's mouths at the unexpected rush of it. He takes her wrists and pins them up over her head, knowing that she likes it. He holds her in place solely with his hips, laving at her jaw, feeling her muscles contract gloriously around him. She isn't the type of woman to like feeling dominated, but she's the kind that likes to know just how badly someone wants her. And he isn't sure if he's ever wanted anyone more than he does her right now.

She is going to come, can feel it with every fiber of his being, and he knows that as soon as she starts over the edge he'll go with her, so he has to get the words out now. He shifts a bit, quickly, so that he can get her there without the use of his already occupied fingers. He thrusts and she starts to break, her mouth parting in a sob against his neck. Her lips are like grace on him, redemptive, a tongue of fire, revelation, inspiration, and the words coming bleeding out of him and into her.

_You taste like you've survived_.

She cries as she flutters all around him, a flower with all her petals ripped off and thrown to the wind. He can't resist; he lets go when she does, follows her. Can't help it. Doesn't want to.

* * *

He knows she'll disappear. More illusion than anything, a girl like her always disappears. The ones you want most never stay. But for a few moments, breathless against the wall, he gets her presence, and he is gluttonous about it.

He can't staunch the desire to unburden his every thought to her. Like a bleeding wound, he wants to whisper to her in an impromptu sort of pillow talk that he writes about good and evil for a living – _has she ever heard of him_ – and that he is thinking about killing off Derrick Storm. He has been feeling stunted, bored, and is depending more and more on outings like this to power him through what has always been his favorite activity. He needs something new, but his publisher keeps turning down his ideas, and since he's kind of been jonesing to sleep with her, he follows her instructions. But tonight, right now, he feels light, weightless, redeemed. He should feel dirty, because he left his kid and came to an outer borough strip club and fucked a stranger in an alleyway, but he feels remarkably buoyant. Like fate has seen through the alignment of all of these strange stars, his and hers, a brief but lingering theirs.

He is surprised she kisses him. It's a good, thorough kiss, too, and for a moment he is filled with hope, but as soon as she pulls back and smiles at him with clear, bright, unfiltered eyes, he knows. He has a few moments to accept it, and when he does, he smiles back at her. This was spectacular. This he'll remember forever.

Later he will regret his pacifism, his unwillingness to demand more. But then he remembers what his mother once told him about his father, that they knew more love in one night than most people know in a lifetime. And he accepts it all over again, even if he aches a little at having only a memory to temper his loneliest moments.

They dress each other. It's sensual, languid, arousing in a slow, simmering way. He can't beat back the smile off his face as she keeps her eyes on him. When she holds out her hand for him to shake, he laughs but complies.

"It was nice to meet you… Jameson."

A weird, grating ache fills his throat for a moment. She won't even know his real name. For once, the mystery and intrigue seem oppressive. But the night is only getting deeper, and he should get home.

He doesn't refrain from the truth. "It was great."

She smiles brightly, tugs her lip between her teeth, and then ghosts her lips against his.

"I knew it would be."

* * *

_A few years later…_

* * *

Murder doesn't excite her. Leads don't even hold the same thrill that they used to. But this… this is definitely Beckett-flavored. Innocent people are regrettably dead, but she can't help the tumult rolling through her stomach as she rides the elevator up to the rooftop of the swanky downtown hotel.

She's heard a rumor that in this book, his latest one, he's killed off Derrick Storm. Interesting.

Weaving through the crowd, her excitement spins a web in her. She's not the type to fangirl, doesn't tend to get star struck, but he _is_ her favorite author, and she is immensely curious as to what he might have to do, if anything, with these murders. She asks a slightly sour-faced blonde woman where she can find the man in question, and the woman, with a discreet huff of her breath, points to a man sitting at the bar. He's talking to a redheaded girl who seems awfully young. She _had_ heard he was a womanizer, but this seems a bit much….

She approaches him with careful, measured steps. At the last moment, her nervous, excited energy is flushed out by professional calm, and she gets out his name in a nice, neutral tone.

"Mr. Castle?"

He spins around, marker lifted in hand, and she hears "Where would you like it?" before all the sound rushes out of her ears.

He drops the marker, but she keeps her grip on her badge, though she can't find the ability, suddenly, to raise it up for him to see. They stare at each other with open mouths, and abruptly it's three years earlier, only this time it's not desire threading them together in a loud, turbulent crowd.

"Nikki," he breathes, all the color gone from his face. And then – goddamn him – he starts to smile. And her knees start to weaken. _This can't be happening_.

Her hand moves on its own, saving her, and she hears herself mutter, "Detective Kate Beckett, NYPD."

She watches the lights come on in his eyes, like something that had gone on unsolved suddenly makes total sense. And then his smile widens. He's not leering. He looks completely and utterly _happy_ to see her.

"Detective Kate Beckett," he rolls over his tongue, like he's testing out the sound and texture of it. Shit, his tongue. There hasn't been a night in the past three years that she hasn't imagined it creating perfect friction against her.

Crap, this is even _worse_ timing than before.

Suddenly his hand comes out nowhere, and she sucks in a quick, startled breath at the sight and nearness of it.

"Richard Castle," he drawls out, "bestselling author who occasionally feels out scenes for his books by going deep, _deep_ undercover." Now he starts to leer. "Or, you know, not under the covers at all."

She hates him and wants to mount him all at once. The most fantastic physical encounter she's ever had… was with her favorite writer all along. It makes sense, what with the way his words had created in her true, visceral reactions, as natural and monumental as an earthly rumble.

And now she has to bring him into a tiny little interrogation room, where it'll be just him and her.

Oh, _this_ ought to be interesting.

* * *

_I'll never be the same if we ever meet again. Won't let you get away if we ever meet again._


End file.
